Classifying John Boyd with Chuck Spinney
Military scholars and practitioners continue to debate the significance and merit of John Boyd’s ideas more than 20 years after his death. Colonel Boyd is the legendary Air Force fighter pilot who, in...
23 Maj 201945min
F-35 Far From Ready
The Navy’s version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, recently declared ready for combat, has netted unacceptably low “fully mission capable” rates—meaning it’s in fact almost never fully ready for com...
25 Mars 201935min
Mission Command with Bruce Gudmundsson and Don Vandergriff
Former Army Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey issued a challenge to the Army in 2012 to change its institutional culture. In his transformative “Mission Command White Paper,” he wrote that “education and ...
28 Feb 201959min
Program Helps Marine Officers Develop Decision-Making Skills
Instructors at The Basic School, the Marine Corps’ six-month-long course for all newly commissioned officers, are using training methods used in institutions like Harvard Business School and Columbia ...
28 Jan 20196min
Who Killed LT Van Dorn
Navy LT Wes Van Dorn raised concerns for years about the safety of the MH-53E helicopters in his squadron. Aging equipment and shoddy maintenance plagued the entire fleet for years which he believed s...
7 Jan 201934min
F-35 Program Cutting Corners to “Complete” Development
Officials in the F-35 Joint Program Office are doing paper reclassifications of potentially life-threatening design flaws to make them appear less serious, likely in an attempt to prevent the $1.5 tri...
7 Sep 201826min
Jamie Schwandt, Grading the Army’s Staff College
After receiving his grades from the Army’s Command and General Staff College, Major Jamie Schwandt decided to assign his own grades for the instructors and the institution itself. He did not paint a f...
3 Aug 201847min
Jeff Groom, Disillusioned Helicopter Pilot
Jeff Groom, a former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, recently published a highly satirical, and occasionally irreverent, account of his experiences in uniform, American Cobra Pilot: A Marine Remembers ...
26 Juni 201855min
